Frankly, I'm not impressed. I was holding on, hoping for some real cash out of this. Instead I get a "one in ten share cancellation". So in essence the company keeps the proceeds of the sale for purposes it has yet to determine. The record hasn't been too positive in this regard. Serious misjudgments in Australia as well as other more local misdeployment of assets leave me with the feeling that I could have used these funds far better to my own advantage than leaving them with a company with such a mixed record.

Granting that the company has a strong position in NZ - perhaps unassailable, I'm still left with the feeling that this is a very tough nut to crack in a very unfriendly environment. Every national telecom company I can think of has had very tough sledding for a very long period after being forced to split open and face outside competition. Some never fully recover.

I know that the share cancellation will help the numbers and positively affect dividends, but they have to get the earnings first. Note that they just declared a 7 cents (NZD) dividend, down from 9.5 a year earlier. No, I'm less than impressed.

I can as good dividends elsewhere with far better growth possibilities.

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